


How about...

by Shadowdianne



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:55:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24020173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/Shadowdianne
Summary: Her lips felt numb at the end of everything, her chest open, her eyes hurting when her eyelids responded.“How about no more waiting?”This time she didn’t answer. Not with words.
Relationships: Ellie Chu/Aster Flores
Comments: 19
Kudos: 251





	How about...

**Author's Note:**

> I threw this one in just 40 minutes the day I watched the movie. Didn’t proof-read it much afterwards and I merely thought on sending it to the roomie But I guess… why not sharing it here xD

The air was icy when the train stopped, the rails whining at the sudden halt and by the time Ellie jumped out of compartment, boots firm against the pebbled road, she breathed in the scent of asphalt and soon-to-be snow that permeated the nighttime breeze.

She could have gotten in town much earlier, when the night wasn’t a shadow already passed over the horizon. On her wrist, dutifully annotated, where the timetables of the different trains that would have run from her campus to her childhood home but she had felt reluctant to do so and when she squared her shoulders and brought her right hand back to where she had put her trolley with a heavy thud mere moments before, she nibbled into her bottom lip, nerves getting the best of her once again.

It wasn’t the city on itself, she told herself as she started to walk towards her right, the train groaning as it picked up speed once more. She hadn’t felt a reaction inside of her the moment the rails had curled and run through the few and distant buildings that signaled the line between forest and town. The lush green marred with salt-peppered grey concrete had made her smile for once after all: the knowledge that she wasn’t stuck but merely passing a different kind of feeling to get drunk into once she realized that she had left for good. Yet, as she walked past the rails and the small cabin she had spent so much in, nerves didn’t quite leave her lungs. Spreading, mutating, they formed a tight ball around her throat that made her swallow by the time she reached her home, her former home.

She knew her father was inside, the lights on the kitchen’s window enough to tell her she had already been spotted by the man and the sounds coming from the ajar door signaling that he had already put a film to watch together while they ate. This time, though, the one he was probably giving her like every other pause he now used to give her whenever she called, amidst exams and outings and books that should be read for the next class she was supposed to take, a whirlwind of unspoken understanding.

He had never quite asked her why she had trouble wondering what life was back in town whenever she asked about Paul work. She suspected that, eventually, it didn’t matter how far off he was from the little town’s busy life: rumors were unperturbable to time. It was only a matter of it before he got to hear what had happened months ago. She would answer the questions that would spill of course, but she doubted very much that the man would ever question her.

And that, she considered while she pushed the door open, was as much of a blessing as it was a curse.

Not that she hadn’t talked to others about what had happened during her last months of her senior year. Private as she was there were things that eventually spilled out of one’s mind. Even if one didn’t want it so. But she still wondered if she would feel raw or betrayed if her father questioned it, if he told her to confide in him.

Morose wasn’t a feeling she often felt like but the thought of being halfway through her university career, the two years bell having been ringing on her ears ever since she had turned her last paper in, felt like a looming doom that she couldn’t run fast enough from. Which was probably the reason why that, when her father had asked her if she would be up for a small reunion of two to three days using up the few days between papers and the time she would need to go back to her in-university job, she had said yes.

Maybe to show him that there was nothing new about herself. Maybe to tell herself that there was, in fact, something.

Nevertheless, she took the last steps and smiled at his silhouette, at the way his shoulders hunched and moved as he stepped forward to hug her. Short, brief, awkward. They still were after all. That much hadn’t changed.

Patting his back, she looked around, spotting the bag that was emblazoned with Munsky’s Dinner symbol. The telling note on how his father has kept contact with the little glance of the outside world that she had brought into those years ago.

“You look good.” She said, words rusty but language prevailing and Edwin nodded curtly with just a shadow of a smile curving his lips. It felt good, she thought, pointing at what had been her room, trolley still behind her, secure on her already freezing hand. “Let me change and we can start dinner.”

He said nothing to her, merely remaining busy while she climbed up and by the time she reached the last few steps she tucked her chin into her chest, content and less anxious that there hadn’t been any tearful reunion nor cutting questions into the what or how. Pushing the trolley until it stopped at the end of her bed, she glanced around, flinching ever so slightly at the empty feeling of the room; the thought of being trespassing into a person she had been once not quite hitting her as strongly as she had feared it would. She hadn’t changed that much obviously. But there were things, small things, that made her look at the wood on the walls and the rickety pieces of written papers on the side table, before glancing towards the duvet, expecting almost to see something there, a letter that could have been sent but had never reached her for a reason she would get to listen to later.

Her bed was empty, though, devoid of a letter, and she looked at the window in where the dying lights of orange-ish lamps pooled around the rails as they mixed with the grey smoke that seemed to permanently come off from the nearby road. The one she had taken time and time again to get to school.

In there, dividing the slope that would eventually turn to the town proper, the stone wall made of red bricks blinked into existence. She hadn’t looked towards it when she had gotten off the train, the metal shielding her from it, the thought of seeing her father blinding her to anything else. Which, perhaps, had been her error because there, waiting, cans of paint and a blank slate of white painted over the red awaited her with one single word written in deep blue. The kind of one that could be water if one tilted their head enough, eyes narrowing until the lights hurt less.

“Hello.”

And it could be a message to anyone. It probably was, her rational part whispered to her as she turned and stormed out of the room, trolley forgotten, patterns of dust imprinted on her boots. But she had shared enough letters to recognize the handwriting, enough, she hoped, to be able to link to them in a second. And not like she hadn’t looked at the string of messages they had one shared a few times during her stay; hoping against hope to be on the receiving end of a message that would telegraph the longing she herself felt. Eventually, she had realized that she could also be the one sending a message, three dots that would eventually turn into a confession with a much deeper meaning that the one she had almost shouted to everyone in the midst of a proposal that should have never happened. And, at the thought of doing that, at the weight that on itself had brought upon her mind, she had revoked herself from the sentiment: unsure if she was strong enough to bear it.

It had been a fling. She had told herself. An almost maybe. A promise in the shape of a kiss in the middle of an empty road; a brave yet stupid declaration that had kept her on stitches every time she considered coming back there for just a spell. No one should weigh themselves for the things they did back when they were 17.

No one should be that cruel.

Her father said nothing as she run past him, the handle on the main door frozen beneath her fingertips, the shock minute with the way she pulled it back towards her as she stepped into the road once again. Crossing to the other side of the road she stood at the brink of the now empty rail, her boots straining against the metal, the sole of her feet protesting. Beneath the cans, tucked away, a note laid, paper that felt as if it could fling against her fingers if she wished hard enough. Crouching next to the cans, one hand caressing the paint, feeling the coldness coming from it, the slowly drying white, she unfolded the note with two fingers and her teeth, moving the paper away from her as she refused to move her other hand away from the wall.

“I wasn’t sure then. I am now.”

She tried to laugh, a blubber escaping her lips, peal of bubbles that piled up within her as she looked up.

It had been two years. Two stupid years made in a dare, in a flamboyant act of selfish righteousness. But she had gotten to learn that she could be selfish on her own love. If that made sense. It the words she had uttered had been something beyond an escapist explanation of why she had ever convinced herself that what she was doing was nothing but right. It shouldn’t be this complicated. It didn’t need to be. She had gotten the taste of how it could not be if she dared to look past the circle she had put herself in once.

And then, as a distant nagging sensation, her phone buzzed on her back pocket. Once, twice.

She never got to see what it was, as she heard the pebbles sliding off the path when a new set of boots moved in closer, waiting for her to look up.

Aster’s was looking at her with the same intensity she had once upon a time looked at her, when they had been in the lagoon and Ellie had thought she would combust if she ever dared to ask to feel her fingers around her forearms once more as she battled for a shirt that she had felt unsafe enough, exposed enough, to keep on wearing. She had her phone on her hand, the light illuminating her skin, her wrist, her nails. She had a stroke of dyed color on her hair. Not clear enough for the descending light to catch on it but deep enough for her eyes to pause on it, on the way it framed her eyes, her face, her smile. Pointing towards the wall, she shrugged half-way.

“Paul told me you’d be here. I wanted to leave as soon as you saw…. But I couldn’t.”

There were hundreds of questions Ellie felt like asking, and some others she didn’t feel like questioning. She could feel her father’s eyes on the kitchen’s windowsill, the scent of already heated food reaching them both as she stood, slowly, while curling her fingers, forming a ball she now made it reach the front pocket of her parka, skin wet and crackling from the humid paint.

She had wondered. Of course, she had. She had expected herself to be bolder in front of Aster only due to the years that had passed, for the exhilarating thought of maybe she being right.

She was none of those things: she felt robbed of both voice and temper. There was nothing but the ache on her muscles of thousands of steps never taken. Yet, she realized that she quite liked the thought: of the possibility that the message on her phone could be, even if she never dared to look at it.

“It’s been two years.” Her voice felt rough at the back of her throat, her tongue like wood and sand, the same sand she hadn’t gotten to see until she had left. And even then. Aster halted at her, lips half-closed, a look of recognition shining through her eyes. Laughing weakly, she nodded again, giving her a second half-shrug, this time aimed at both, rather than the wall that now extended at Ellie’s right, like a page about to be filled.

“You said two.”

“I said two.”

It was an idiotic set of words, combinations and grammar be dammed. Yet Ellie laughed a little as they kept on looking at each other. As if expecting something. She had been the one rushing last time, hasn’t she? Was that what was expected from her? To be the one keeping the promise she had told.

But then, Aster moved forward, timidly at first, more secure later, and promptly grasped her forearm, the one with her painted skin, and pulled, making her stumble as her fingers slipped away from the pocket, crusty and suddenly warm enough to be melt. She pushed back, because that had been them, at the very beginning, before anything had transformed into the mess that had been. And when she did, muscles answering, she felt a second pull, this one on her shoulder, poignant glance darkening the space.

Her lips felt numb at the end of everything, her chest open, her eyes hurting when her eyelids responded.

“How about no more waiting?”

This time she didn’t answer. Not with words.

Words could be screwed. And promises of a time that should be spent waiting scattered in the wind, against the windows, over the rooftops, beyond the town’s sign.


End file.
